“This is a revolution,” said multibillionaire Elon Musk this week, who is currently serving as an advisor to President Donald Trump. “And I think it might be the biggest revolution in government since the original revolution.”
He was talking about the efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), created by Trump shortly after he began his second term, in an interview with FOX News. While the department’s moves have been met with lawsuits and criticism from many, Musk and a team of DOGE staffers defended their work in the interview.
“America is going to be in much better shape,” due to their efforts, Musk told FOX host Bret Baier.
During the interview, Musk and the DOGE staffers referenced what they consider “waste” and “fraud” in the government, including millions of credit cards, surveys and Social Security scams. However, some of those claims have been debunked by multiple sources, including a Friday roundup article published in The New York Times.
As of Friday, the DOGE website claimed that the department’s work has already created $130 billion in savings. Musk said that his ultimate goal is to reduce the U.S. deficit by $1 trillion and to reduce spending by 15%. He said the latter could be achieved without cutting critical government programs. With the U.S. racking up an estimated $3 billion in interest debt daily, the notion of cutting government waste does sound appealing to many.
“The government is not… not efficient,” he said. “And there’s a lot… a lot of waste and fraud.”
Savings claims and fraud claims made by DOGE have failed to pass fact checks in the past, but Musk complained that those complaints never cover specific line items offered on the DOGE site. Staffer Steve Davis said during the FOX interview that the “real time” transparency feature of the website that lists line-item savings is not actually in “real time” yet, adding that it is expected in the coming weeks.
One example of a contested claim is Musk’s reference to a $1 billion survey during the interview. Davis later said that it was a reference to $830 million in spending regarding the Department of the Interior.
According to the Times, “this appears to have been a reference to the purported dissolution of a directorate in the Interior Department, not just one 10-question survey.” Furthermore, it said that “there is no single contract for one 10-question web survey worth $75 million, let alone $830 million or $1 billion listed in DOGE’s own list of terminated contracts as of Monday.”
Baier noted that Musk is only intended to hold his position and lead the DOGE project for a 130-day period. He asked if the president’s advisor still plans to stop after that point and if there will be a report on DOGE’s work.
“Not really a report,” said Musk. “We are cutting the waste in fraud in real time,” he added, referring to the yet-to-be-released feature of the DOGE website. He also said that he works to keep Congress updated on DOGE’s work.
Some of the recent moves by the Trump administration, including the dissolution of departments and programs such as the Department of Education and the United States Agency for International Development, have faced legal action since those agencies were created by Congress and would have to be dissolved via legislation rather than presidential action. Just this week, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to allow it to freeze funds for teacher training that were already approved by Congress.
That is part of the reason why some experts have questioned whether the work of DOGE is not Constitutional or legal. Both Congress and the courts are important aspects of the nation’s check and balance system on executive power, as laid out in the U.S. Constitution.